Nerdy comment from difficult child 3

We're having problems with our internet at times. We have a broadband system but our main house computer has to use dial-up. It then broadcasts wirelessly around the house (password protected, of course!) But every day almost without fail, about half an hour after I've started up the main computer, the wireless system fails. All the little lights on the modem are on, but it's not sending. My laptop will default to whatever system it can find, and the neighbour (we don't know who) has a broadband network that is not password protected, my laptop hooks onto that when the home system goes down, so often the first I know we are off the air is when difficult child 3 roars out in anger that the PS3 is down.

This means it has been difficult child 3 to be the first to find a solution of sorts; if the network is down, I was finding that a restart would resolve it. But difficult child 3 has found a way. He wrote out the procedure for me today.

When I went in to ask him if he could fix the broadcast for me, he said, "Are we offline again? OK, I'll go and defibrillate it."

I had to giggle. I had a mental picture of difficult child 3 bending over the computer armed with paddles and shouting, "CLEAR!"

easy child just programmed her computer to talk. She had it earlier saying in a Stephen Hawkings voice: Make a hot chocolate mom. Please with a cherry on top. When that failed to get me up to make her a drink (she's plenty old enough to make it and yet refuses to do things like that for herself, drives me nuts) she then programmed it to say : I said pretty please with a cherry on top. If my mom does not make hot chocolate I will be forced to sell my brother to pay for a mom who will make me hot chocolate at bedtime.

ROFLMAO!! Man what a mental picture! Mostly because although cable has now been out twice to fix out "connection" issues, including giving us a new motem, the darn thing still doesn't work half the time.

You know that booting a computer brings a mental image of kicking the dratted thing. Which I have seriously been tempted to do.

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The funny thing is that we say we are 'booting' a computer is even stranger than simply kicking it into life. I was first told the term came from the frustration experienced when starting up the old mainframes, then I found out the REAL reason for the term.

A switched off computer is simply a large paperweight, dumb as a rock the same size and not much lighter. When you switch it on it doesn't even 'know' how to respond to key strokes, etc. In the old days they were able set a 'programme' by using switches (real switches) to tell it where to go to get instructions on how to respond to commands. It is like deciding you want to climb the wall but you have not got a ladder and you don't know how. So you grab your shoelaces (boot straps) and pull until you lift your boots (with you in them) up the wall to find the instructions on how to climb higher up the wall. It's impossible for us of course but electronically it IS possible.

Early computer programmers HAD to have been difficult child's themselves and came up the phrase bootstrapping a computer to describe the start up process. This is a mouthful so it was quickly shortened to booting and when you had to do it again rebooting.